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Yes, the speed of innovation is growing with accessibility to knowledge. In the middle ages, access to knowledge and science was very limited. Thus also innovat

Yes, the speed of innovation is growing with accessibility to knowledge. In the middle ages, access to knowledge and science was very limited. Thus also innovation was also limited to a few people. This should make people understand, that hiding knowledge away in obnoxious expensive science publications is one of the biggest hindrances to innovation today. Science knowledge (when it is the truth) never grows old. Or would you think one moment, that the wheel is an invention so old, that we don't need it any more?

vcjohnson 12y ago
>This should make people understand, that hiding knowledge away in obnoxious expensive science publications is one of the biggest hindrances to innovation today. I'm still not sure how we get away with publishing items behind paywalls when a large percentage of the funding comes from the NSF/tax dollars. As an undergraduate, I was co-authored on two papers in fairly prestigious astronomical journals. The irony? I can't link my papers to potential employers or interested parties through the journal - I have to upload to arXiv to show people.
saretired 12y ago
Progress on open access is slow. 6 or 7 years ago I wanted to read a couple of papers by Cayley, who died in 1895. These were published in the Transactions of the Royal Society--and paywalled. (Google Books had a few volumes of his collected papers available, but not the one I needed.) A few years ago, the Royal Society finally made papers published before the mid-20th century available for free, which is progress, but considering the public funding for the Royal Society, it's hard to understand why anything they publish is still paywalled for 70 years.
thaumasiotes 12y ago
Well, a traditional wheel, made from three wooden boards (|), doesn't see much application today. ;)
- PythonicAlpha 12y ago
  But when it would have been patented then by one of todays patent attorneys and the patent would still be valid, you could trash our modern life!

vcjohnson 12y ago

>This should make people understand, that hiding knowledge away in obnoxious expensive science publications is one of the biggest hindrances to innovation today. I'm still not sure how we get away with publishing items behind paywalls when a large percentage of the funding comes from the NSF/tax dollars. As an undergraduate, I was co-authored on two papers in fairly prestigious astronomical journals. The irony? I can't link my papers to potential employers or interested parties through the journal - I have to upload to arXiv to show people.

saretired 12y ago

Progress on open access is slow. 6 or 7 years ago I wanted to read a couple of papers by Cayley, who died in 1895. These were published in the Transactions of the Royal Society--and paywalled. (Google Books had a few volumes of his collected papers available, but not the one I needed.) A few years ago, the Royal Society finally made papers published before the mid-20th century available for free, which is progress, but considering the public funding for the Royal Society, it's hard to understand why anything they publish is still paywalled for 70 years.

thaumasiotes 12y ago

Well, a traditional wheel, made from three wooden boards (|), doesn't see much application today. ;)

PythonicAlpha 12y ago
But when it would have been patented then by one of todays patent attorneys and the patent would still be valid, you could trash our modern life!